So in the middle of March, with COVID pandemic and full swing in New York City, I started to get nervous about I was nervou spent a lot of things.
I was nervous about my restaurant's closing. I was nervous about the health of myself and my family, and and what my kids were going to do in terms of school, and and But I also, and maybe because I spend a lot of time of thinking about the food system, I kind of started, you know, wondering whether or not our entire food system was going to come to a halt, whether farmers would continue to grow crops, whether people farm hands were gonna get out there and pick and process food,
whether or not the distribution channels to get that food into the supermarket was going to break down. What was going to happen if the entire system came to a halt. My thoughts turned towards my garden in my home. I have a small little house in North farkh Long Island, and I started gardening about six seven years ago, and I started thinking, I gotta get out there, I gotta start planting team because I may have to use this
garden to survive and feed my family. In fact, I remember having this conversation with with my wife and because we were talking about, right, let's figure out what's essential in terms of going forward for the next couple of months. And I said, I gotta go out in the garden, and yes, I cook from my garden, so that's also enjoyable. And I turned and said, no, this isn't about enjoying something. This is about survival. I think we may need this
food to few of our family. My privilege here is showing because I had the property and I had a garden. What if you don't. What if you are going through the same struggles, and maybe you have a small little bit of land in your backyard. You've never garden before, you've never thought about gardening before, where do you start? A lot of people started with those seed companies. People started gardening, and they started turning to the soil to
take back that sovereignty. And so so for this episode, we're going to explore this people who are new to gardening and a whole system of and years of not being able to farm for their communities and what they're doing to take back that food sovereignty. Let's jump in so during this time, when people started to grow their COVID gardens, they turned to seed companies. That's where it all begins. You had these websites crashed. In fact, Burpies I think sold more seeds in March than any month
in their hundred forty four year history. Food gardening is up quite a bit. People want to One local plant shop is seeing demand rise. Johnny's Seeds saw sales jump two hundred and sevent the week after COVID was declared a national emergency in mid Mark. Victory gardens played a big role on the home front during the dark days
of World War Two. They're back. So we're just gonna check in and uh see if people are actually um planting more gardens and um buying way more seeds than they need, kind of freaking out about the food supply in general. Let's hear from journalists Morgan Levy who talked to farmers and business owners in Montana about the pandemics effect on their business. Um so so, Morgan, who did
you an interview from Triple Divide Seed co Op. I talked to Leslie Klein, who was the manager or who is the manager of Triple Divide Organic Seed co Op and I interviewed her at their seeds storage room, so it was pretty quiet room. That wasn't great background audio to hear see. Those seeds don't make a whole of them. They don't. But I did ask her to read the names of some of these seed packets because they are sort of beautifully named and it it sounded like poetry
as she was reading them. Um. But yeah, Leslie and I had a great conversation about the uh crazy popularity of organic seeds this year. Yeah you know, I didn't. I didn't recognize the name. But when you told me about the crazy names and I now I know you're talking about. Um I I kind of, you know, started gardening a few years back, and I kind of joke around that, uh I started reading seed catalogs like I used to look at Playboy. I guess when I was
sixteen or so. Names, well the names in the ritals, and um, you know, you realize that there's so many possibilities and so what what what what did you learn? What? What? What? What is going on? Is I know that you know a couple of seed companies like Johnny's and Baker Creek, they actually had a shut down for a period of time. Yeah, so what did you learn? So Triple Divide is a smaller seed co op. They're not one of the really big ones, and they are a small company, but they
are growing consistently every year. However, usually most of their sales come from racks that are in retail stores. Um. But when COVID hit and in Montana we really shut down at the end of March, there online sales skyrocketed. I think in March last year they had eleven online orders. This year they had eighty, and most of them came
in the last two weeks of March. And uh, it was an overwhelming amount of growth, so much so that Leslie said she had to shut down the website a couple of times, and then in mid May they actually shut down the website for the summer um. And that was because Leslie is a farmer herself, she is, you know, busy, and it was it was overwhelming, and because of COVID, she had to be doing the fulfilling most of these orders on her own. She couldn't have a lot of
people in there together. Um. But it was such an overwhelming um number of sales that even they ran out of seed packets even because across the country, organic seed companies were you know, having these explosive sales, and the seed packet company was you know, slammed, so they had to be hand labeling packets and it was I think I think she was grateful for the sales, but also overwhelmed by them, and so she is, Um, these are seeds for for gardeners, not farmers. She's not doing bulk
seeds for corn and soy. They do have different amounts they sell to. I think they sell to both, but they have no way of really differentia differentiating on their in their online sales, so she just wasn't tracking who specifically she was selling to. UM. She did tell me that I think some of the bigger companies sort of stopped selling to home gardeners and just sold to bigger farmers just so they get fulfill those orders. All right.
Did she know whether the increased traffic was from recent our new gardeners and UM, I'm wondering if she had a helpline for those gardeners like me that I planted I planned my you know, my peppers and they're not growing and what do I do right? Help me? Right? And she she doesn't really have a way to check, but she does know where who, where geographically people are ordering from. And these are seeds that are produced in
Montana and do really well in Montana. They might do well and somewhere else in the country that has similar weather to us, but we have a really short growing season, so she would seeing people ordering different seed varietals at a different part of the country way late in the season and saying, oh, gosh, I hope they're not planting
these now, and hoping they'll grow. I did talk to a woman named Genevieve Jessup Marsh who as a community outreach director of farm and educational center here in Missoula called Garden City Harvest, and they have four urban farms and they provide food for the soup kitchen and the food bank, but they also have land for community gardeners and uh, you know, they normally sell out of their community garden plots and normally they have about forty people
on the wait list. This year they had a hundred people on the wait list, so they were totally overwhelmed. And the big difference though, besides that, was that, you know, every year there's some abandonment rate, right people farms are. I mean, garden plots, any kind of growing is intensive and it's hard. It takes time. People start traveling and they're saying, I don't have time for this, or they start growing things and they're just failing left and right
and get frustrated and abandoned it. And she said this year they had hardly any of their plots were abandoned. That people were there all the time. It was really safe activity. People could be outside, they could tend their garden. It probably felt really good. Um, and people new gardeners were really really relying on people who had had plots for a long time. There was a big community knowledge share that was happening. People were talking about pests, talking
about varietals, and helping each other out. So I think people were, you know, community gardeners were getting help from other community garden members. I think that's really where people were sharing knowledge and chatting. Yeah, yeah, that that makes sense. You know, I I know, just from my own personal experiences. You know, when pests attack, um, you know, it's it's
pretty sad. I'm getting used to it now. I mean, I have, uh, this borer warm problem on my zucchini, and so when the zucchini's first come up, they look great and there's plenty of fruit, and then one day they just looked sick and they wither and I can go right to the stock and pick it up, crack in half, and there's that worm sitting right in the middle of the stock. And I can't seem to get rid of them. I don't know how to get rid of them. Um. I had a white fly problem. I
had all kinds of problems this year. Um. The other thing that a lot of I think first garden, like, my first season was amazing and I planted about eighteen years so five by seven boxes and it was all irrigated and it was all ready to go and it was amazing. And someone, you know, it's second third year wasn't as good. And someone said, well, in the first year, the bugs really haven't found you yet, and they will. Um, and uh they will, Yeah, they'll find you. Um. But UM,
it's you're right, it is. It is tough, you know. It's I have to spend at least two hours a day. Um, are the weeds just right now and I haven't been um, And so the weeds just U just overcome everything and you end up you know, and I think also people don't realize that when things serve, you know, So if you plant I don't know, peas, and you have a great spring of peas, you gotta cut them down and get rid of them. I don't kind of don't triple
to go away work. It's it's it's a lot of hard work and labor and then you get you know, of course you go down the rabbit hole hall of buying tools. Right. It's labor intensive and expensive and you can spend a lot of time. And in Montana we have a really short growing season. I think our average last frost state is mid May, so you really have to get the timing right in order to you have a small window of planting and you have a small window of growing um and so it's easy to miss that.
And you know, I think in June we were having four day degree nights, so you need to pull that tarp out and cover your tomato plants. And last week we had kale. So it's easy to go wrong really quickly, and I can see it being frustrating. Um. You know, this woman Gendervieve I spoke with. They garden City Harvest provides a lot of educational materials and usually that's all done in person, but this year they transition to online. But they were relying on their local community to sort
of spread knowledge. And the other thing I think most people that that when they they're new to gardening um, when when harvest time comes for a particular crop, there's a lot of it. It's not like you get one or two you know, you know a couple of zucchini, A lot of zucchini, are you? A lot of green beans are and so you have to figure out what to do with it, and you can obviously eat, But then I find myself canning a lot um. And so in your experience, are they giving these cooks where they
getting lessons on canning as well and preserving the harvest? Yeah, So Garden City Harvest provides a lot of materials, especially on um preserving your food because this is what they don't want, right So Garden City Harvest also they have a c S A program that they have thrown a lot of money into for the past few years to try to get people to to buy these c s a s. But c s a s are tricky and that it's kind of a lot of money upfront for some people, um, and then you're not necessarily getting to
pick the produce you're getting, and it can be a lot of produce, so these can be sort of overwhelming things for people. And they've never sold out of them before except for this year. This year they sold out of it for the first time, and it's wildly popular. They have even a wait list, And it was really just because people wanted to take control over where they were getting their food from, and they I think in a crisis, people felt like they couldn't rely on the
grocery store, so they went this way. But with that, you know, there's a lot of produce, and so you know, they're trying to provide a lot of lessons to people. How you can preserve your food so you don't just end up with a lot of wilted and rotten vegetables. How can you make this food last longer. I found the same. Not only was it difficult getting seas, I had a heart on getting plants because I don't do
my own starts. And there's an organic farm, you know, a couple miles from my house where I purchased a lot of plants, you know, and so I couldn't get you know, certain peppers that I was looking for that I know I got the last couple of years, cucumbers. I could get cucumbers, UM, I couldn't find parsley. UM. There were like certain things. Why did why sir? Run on?
You know? And partially I spoke with a man named Josh Slotnik, who is the owner of a farm called Clark Pork Organics, And he's also a county commissioner in Missoula. And uh, Clark Pork Organics typically sells to restaurants. UM
and COVID hit really during our planting season in Missoula. UM, so farmers weren't having to plow under vegetables, but they were having to plan ahead and say, oh, should I should I plant as I typically would to sell to restaurants, or should I change my whole operation and plan to sell directly to consumers. And what Clark Fork Organics did was they had a farm stand that they never really paid a lot of attention to, and this year they
sort of doubled down on it. And one of the big sellers for them early in the season was bedding plants. Because because people all had their their own gardens and community garden was way up and all these new gardeners and home gardeners, and they were they were actually, um, you know, making some money off of these bedding plants, which they typically wouldn't have been selling. Their herbs were really popular and people were just really excited to have
access to bedding plants. I was a first time gardener myself this year, and I was really all about my tail and my egg plant. And the second I turned planted outside, they died. And I was like, well, no, this is citizen Chef and I'm Tomic Colichio and we are talking about homegrown. That's right, homegrown food. Victory gardens are COVID gardens or community gardens, whatever you call them. There's been a huge resurgence in people growing their own food.
So this is your first year, Yeah, awesome, Um, why did you start planning? So I started planning really because I actually have the land. This year. I own a house for the first time and have a yard. We had one raised bed, but we built two more. Um. But then I think it's spent a lot of time there because I was just spending a lot of time in my house and at my house, and it was a great way to be outside. I wasn't super concerned about relying on the garden two feed myself, but I
was really upset when things failed. It's really hard. Yeah, it's it's hard to do. I say the same thing every year too. And I had help. When I first started. There was a restaurant that I was involved in on the south Fork of Long Island Um and we had an acre um that we were planting in ground, and so I had that farmer helped me out. He had a much better handle on when to plant, how much
to plant. But it's it's you know, I agree, when you lose something like I have melons growing right now, and you have to keep them on the vine is as long as possible to ripen up. And they get to the point where you're just ready pick and you see the stem starting to dry out, and you'll let them go another night and the bugs get to them, and it's like it curse these bugs. Yeah, it's tough.
It's that happens. It is, And I know a lot of people who are first time gardeners in Missoula, and we're all sort of in it together a little bit. And I think it was like, oh gosh, I really overplanted my greens, and now I'm drowning in greens, and now I can't give them away to anyone. So the greens, if you harvest them right, just rough, rough, chop, blanche them in boiling water, shock mc cool water. Put him in his zip block bag and freeze them. You're fine.
I'd heard this and I did do it, so we'll see. Okay, good, But you know, but now there's still overwhelming amounts of green. I need to do another I actually made. I made a lot of rugle a pesto at one point, which you know, it seems great, but now I'm going to be eating on everything for the next six months. Um. Do you compost, it's not a total waste. Yeah, and we get our compost picked up by an organization in Missoula. Um, we don't have our own compost pile because I live
in a canyon and there are black bears. Uh. So you really want to limit uh the amount of rotting food on your problems? Yeah, I imagine you do. I don't have that problem. We have. We have raccoons. The people that I knew who were either expanding or garden regarding for the first time, and this happened in New York.
It was you know, March April, UM, and so people just really thought that the food system was going to gonna completely fall apart, and that's what they're They were just concerned they weren't able to get fresh food, and so so many people started gardening. And I think other people also started realizing, well, yeah, it didn't fail and you can't get produced. But still they realized that this is a great opportunity to get outside, um, do something new.
And you know, at the same time, I think just the act of digging around in the dirt, um it does something for your mental health. That's just being in the in the dirt, get in your hands in the soil, has a way of ground you I know did for me when I first started. UM My wife would always say she could tell the difference when I was out in the garden. You know, at the end of the day, Um,
the little edge was taken off. I think it's about caring for something other than yourself too, especially during a time of a lot of anxiety. You know, Plants are a fun thing to at least for me, it was really it was really fun to you know, to take care of them and try to figure out what they needed and take some of the the focus off myself and my own exact anxiety. All right, listen, great talking to you, and uh, I'll get back to your garden.
My grandfather he used to I guess he was an urban gardener where when we grew up, and he used to grow in five gallon buckets and just mostly tomatoes and zucchini, some peppers, and mostly summer crops. So I was interested, but I had no idea how much work it is going to take and how often crops fail. It's not a simple thing to start growing your own food. But one thing I gotta say it does is you get a real sense of accomplishment. It's somewhat therapeutic in
a way. When I get out there in the morning, especially five time, where I'm not rushing, and I have a good you know, hour and a half even two hours earlier morning sist o'clock and I'm morning before it gets hot, and you're in there digg into the soil, and even if you're weeding, it's just a good start of the day. And you feel at the end of the day when you're harvesting and then you're cooking and
putting food on the table for your family. There's a real sort of sense of accomplishment and and I think we all needed that's into the college because when you're dealing with a pandemic that you can't you have no control over other than staying inside wearing a mask, but you really have no control over it. Where family members I haven't seen. I haven't seen my mother since the pandemic. This is one area where you think you can. You
have some control over your life. You're growing your own food. When you think about that, that's that is the ultimate sense of control. You have complete control over what you're growing, what you're eating, and how you're growing. Yet, and so when you think about the unknown, this sort of COVID unknown, can kids go back to school, will things get back to normal? How long are we going to have to
go through social distancing? All these unknowns create anxiety. And I think that one time I don't feel that anxiety, it is when I'm in my garden. So this is our last episode of Citizens Chef in season one, and I thought this would be a really good way to end our our season, a good way to really illustrate that change when people are growing food and creating a change for themselves. COVID nineteen changed the course of our first season. The issues we originally wanted to talk about
had a new public health lens we couldn't ignore. But we're going to continue to dig up these new stories and look at them through a food lens and UH when we return next season, we hope to hear from more people around the country and journalists with their ears to the ground. I want to thank everyone for listening and tuning in, and a very special thanks to our guests, producer and novice gardner Morgan Levy, and as always, a big shout out to a place at the table. Citizen
Chef is a production of iHeart Media. Christopher hauci Otis is our executive producer, Jescelyn Shields is our researcher, and Garielle Collins as our producer. We'll see you back in season two.